The ravens Descend part 2

[Caladai Doomblade]

The Ravens Descend Part 2

The roar of the thunderhawk would have been deafening to it's occupants if they hadn't been wearing their helmets. The enclosing suits of power armour shut out the noise, allowing the marines to speak freely through their comm-systems. Non speak however. Camael and 5 of his brothers sat along the side of the thunderhamk in pairs. Their armours locking them in place with mag-locks inside the seats. All are silent still, preparing themselves for the mission ahead by prayer, meditation or exercise, flexing muscles and repeating combat matra's in their heads.

The black thunderhawk's edges are glowing bright orange from the rapid descent into the atmosphere, dark paint flaking away as usual. The gunturrets on the wings are unmanned, for the heat of atmospheric descend would fry even a space marine inside his armour. The enormous weight of the behemoth pulls it down ever faster, until windrestistance finally halts its speed at around Mach 3,5. With all the flight characteristics of a brick with a rocket engine, the thunderhawk keeps falling, it's edges slowly turning white with heat.

Anti-grav rockets burst into life, and on 5 flaming pillars the thunderhawk slowes down to merely the speed of sound, its edges slowly cooling down a little. Inside, the rumbling and rattling ceased and the three strapped down jet-black landspeeders stopped trying to escape their magnetic clamps. The light inside the compartment changes from red to orange, and as one the six marines disengage the mag-locks holding them and stand up straight. Walking steadily, as if the floor was level instead of traveling at an angle at 700 miles an hour, they clamber into their speeders, pilots starting the engines and engaging the anti-gravity motors, and gunners checking the ammo-feeds and slug-hoppers of their heavy bolters and the assault cannon.

Like a dark bird on a pilar of fire the thunderhawk, all paint burned away in the suicidal drop, levels out at 30 ft above ground level, banking left and right to avoid rock formations and small outcrops of trees. Retro-burners flare into life and the giant dropship slowes quickly, going into hover mode to open it's assault ramp. Inside, hissing and clanking noises are drowned in the thunderous roar that gave the dropship it's characteristic name. Mere moments later three jet-black landspeeders burst out from the open beak of the black bird like little angry flies, accelerating quicly away into the maze of canyons and rock-formations ahead.

Camael steered the landspeeder around a sharp bend in the canyon, his widened vision giving him a glimpse of the thunderhawk as it accelerated almost vertically on a white vapourtrail towards the heavens. Bank left, drop low under overhang, the ground and walls flash by at frightning speeds, and at the same time Camael is watching the blips from the two other land speeders in his squadron on the HUD, while keeping an eye on the area map showing the drop-sites of the other squadrons and the objective buildings a mere 20 miles ahead. Meanwhile brother Imael, his gunner, is reciting the firing prayers to the machine god, combined with directions about dead-ends and turn-radius of bends in the canyon.

Soon, they rise out of the canyons and zoom across the ground, the other land speeders close behind in diamond formation. The first outpost comes into view, and Imael engages the machine spirit to assist him in targeting the assault cannon and heavy bolter, four small displays flashing on, two of them zooming in on their target. Numbers in the screens start counting down the distance to firing range while cooling systems start running their fluids through the main weapons. The numbers are close to zero as the heavy bolter kicks, just once. And then again. And again. Three seconds, three shots, three fist-sized rockets speeding towards the tower and blasting the observation deck to pieces with three dull explosions. Two orcs tumble down 60 feet towards the ground. The battle has begun.